Turkey Abolishes the Death Penalty

Our hat is off to Turkey which has formally abolished the death penalty during peacetime. From the press release from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly:

Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly President Peter Schieder and the Secretary General of the Organisation, Walter Schwimmer, today welcomed Turkey’s formal deposition of the ratification instruments for Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in peacetime, as a milestone on Europe’s path towards a death penalty-free continent.

A death penalty free-continent is what we need. We'll even settle for a moratorium now and abolition in the not-distant future. We are among the last vestiges of the civilized world that still condones state-sanctioned murder. It's time to put a stop to it.